Christie’s to Auction a Dealer’s Legendary Collection

For decades, auctiongoers would see the dealer Jan Krugier arriving at Sotheby’s or Christie’s, fedora tilted carefully to one side and cigar in hand. In the salesroom he would generally sit in the front row, often bidding on a work that caught his eye, be it a Picasso painting, a Giacometti sculpture or a drawing by Victor Hugo. At art fairs, such works would be sumptuously displayed in his booth, generally at prices that were so dizzying that collectors knew he didn’t really want to part with them.

Now, five years after his death, Christie’s plans to offer works from his estate — both his personal collection and inventory from his Geneva gallery — in a special auction on Nov. 4 in Manhattan. The sale is expected to bring more than $160 million. The following day, a sale consisting primarily of works on paper and sculpture is scheduled, with an estimate of around $15 million.

The works are but a fraction of the art amassed by Mr. Krugier over his lifetime. Since his death at 80, some of it has been sold privately and some has been kept by family members.

Among the highlights of Christie’s sales are “Herbstlandschaft,” a 1911 landscape by Kandinsky with a sales estimate of $20 million to $25 million. (Mr. Krugier purchased it in 1989 at Sotheby’s for just under $4 million.) “This painting represents a world he loved, one that falls between the figurative into the abstract,” said Conor Jordan, deputy chairman of Christie’s Impressionist and modern art department.

Mr. Krugier’s relationship with Marina Picasso, a grandchild of the artist who inherited a large group of Picassos, was a long one, and Picassos make up about one-tenth of the sale, from paintings to sculptures to drawings, Mr. Jordan said. Among them is a 1971 self-portrait in oil estimated at $6 million to $8 million. Then there is “Tête” (“Head”), a cutout sheet-iron sculpture that Picasso created as a study for a 50-foot steel sculpture in Daley Plaza in Chicago; it is expected to go for $25 million to $35 million.

Christie’s competed mightily with Sotheby’s to land the sale. What turned the tide, according to people familiar with the negotiations, was offering a more lucrative financial package that included giving Mr. Krugier’s heirs a significant percentage of the buyer’s premium.

Steven Murphy, Christie’s chief executive, declined to discuss the deal, citing confidentiality agreements. “It was a classical estate process, and it was competitive,” he said. “This is a great win for the Impressionist department.”

In addition to the usual marketing, which will include an online video that Mr. Murphy described as a “mini-documentary,” highlights from the sale will tour art capitals around the world, including Shanghai — which is “new for us,” he said, citing that city’s growing number of prosperous art collectors.

MOMA’S POLKE MOMENT

It all started in July 2008 with a visit to Sigmar Polke’s Cologne studio, Kathy Halbreich, associate director of the Museum of Modern Art, recalled. “I told him I wanted to do a comprehensive retrospective of his work, expecting a pushback because he’d never agreed to do a show incorporating more than two or three media together before,” she said.

Photo

“Bust of a Man Writing” (1971), a Picasso self-portrait from Jan Krugier’s estate, will go on the block at Christie’s in November.Credit
2013 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“Surprisingly I got not a moment’s hesitation.”

A great deal has happened since then, including Polke’s death three years ago at 69. Throughout Ms. Halbreich has stuck to her vision, and the museum has now set a date: a major retrospective is to open on April 19, 2014, and run through Aug. 2 before traveling to the Tate Modern in London and the Ludwig Museum in Cologne.

The exhibition encompasses more than 300 works, and Ms. Halbreich said the time is right for this kind of comprehensive survey. “He was an experimental genius who was fearless, erudite and curious,” she added. “He has also been hugely influential to generations of artists working after him.”

Polke was more adventurous than most. In the 1970s, he set out to chronicle the use of hallucinatory drugs in various cultures, traveling to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Brazil with a camera. In 1980, he began exploring Australia and Southeast Asia, working with materials like arsenic, meteor dust, smoke, uranium rays, lavender, cinnabar and a purple pigment from the mucous excreted by snails. To the end, he pushed the boundaries, even producing holographic paintings and stained-glass windows.

The retrospective will be organized chronologically and include small sketchbooks as well as monumental digital canvases. The museum will screen 13 films by Polke, including 8 never publicly shown, as well as pieces like a performance made for West German television that was last broadcast in 1972.

Because of the size of the show and the monumentality of some of the works, it will be installed in the museum’s second-floor galleries rather than on the sixth floor, which is normally used for special exhibitions.

“Some of the paintings are so big, they can only fit on the second floor,” Ms. Halbreich said. “This is one of the largest shows MoMA has ever done.”

THAT PLAYFUL DUO RETURNS

The British duo Gilbert and George like creating work that turns heads. Often laced with politics — economic, social, sexual — their art has embraced subjects ranging from pornography to pandemic diseases, vaudeville to scatology.

Always eager for the unexpected, Cecilia Alemani, director of the High Line’s art program, asked the artists to come up with the next image for a 25-by-75-foot billboard at West 18th Street and 10th Avenue, in a parking lot next to the elevated walkway.

The artists suggested reviving a work they created three decades ago. Titled “Waking,” it is a photo piece from 1984 that belongs to the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain and depicts the artists standing amid a bevy of attractive young men. It will be on view from Sept. 3 through Oct. 1.

“With all the talk today about urban life and gay marriage,” Ms. Alemani said, “it seems even more appropriate now.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 19, 2013, on page C22 of the New York edition with the headline: A Dealer’s Trophies
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